Chapter 11 - The Breach at Midnight
The silence in the safe house was suffocating. Evie paced the length of the small concrete room, the sound of her cheap hospital-issued slippers echoing loudly off the walls. The digital clock above the door glowed a menacing, bright red.
11:42 PM.
Eighteen minutes. She just needed to survive for eighteen more minutes, and the massive trust would legally transfer to her name, rendering her father’s murderous scheme completely useless.
Suddenly, the overhead fluorescent lights flickered violently. A low, mechanical hum vibrating through the floorboards abruptly died. The safe house was plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
Evie froze, her breath catching in her throat. The backup emergency lights, casting a sickly, pale green hue, kicked on three seconds later.
She grabbed the encrypted radio Thorne had given her and slammed her thumb onto the red emergency button. "Detective Thorne! The power just went out. Do you copy?"
Static hissed sharply from the speaker. Nothing else. The communication lines had been severed.
Outside her heavy steel door, the sound of a suppressed gunshot—a dull, unnatural thwip—echoed through the concrete corridor. A heavy body hit the floor. The tactical guards were being neutralized.
Silas had found her.
Panic, raw and paralyzing, threatened to consume her, but Evie forced it down. She had survived a raging inferno; she was not going to die in a concrete box. She scanned the tiny room for anything she could use as a weapon. There was nothing but the cot, a plastic chair, and a heavy fire extinguisher bolted to the wall.
She ripped the heavy red fire extinguisher from its metal bracket, her muscles straining against the weight. She backed herself into the darkest corner of the room, pressing her body flat against the cold concrete wall, raising the heavy metal cylinder above her head.
The electronic keypad outside her door beeped rapidly. The locking mechanism clacked.
The heavy steel door slowly swung open, groaning on its reinforced hinges. A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the pale green light of the room. He wore a dark tactical jacket, and across his neck was a jagged, horrific burn scar that twisted his skin into a permanent, gruesome grimace.
Silas raised a suppressed pistol, his cold, dead eyes scanning the small cot. When he realized it was empty, he turned toward the corner.
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Evie didn't hesitate. With a feral scream, she hurled the heavy fire extinguisher directly at his head. The heavy metal cylinder struck him squarely in the face with a sickening crunch. Silas stumbled backward, his gun firing blindly into the ceiling as he collapsed into the corridor.
Evie bolted out the door, sprinting wildly into the dark labyrinth of the safe house.
